Batavia's Graveyard
The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny
Ratings5
Average rating4.1
It was the autumn of 1628, and the Batavia, the Dutch East India Company’s flagship, was loaded with a king’s ransom in gold, silver, and gems for her maiden voyage to Java. The Batavia was the pride of the Company’s fleet, a tangible symbol of the world’s richest and most powerful commercial monopoly. She set sail with great fanfare, but the Batavia and her gold would never reach Java, for the Company had also sent along a new employee, Jeronimus Corneliszoon, a bankrupt and disgraced man who possessed disarming charisma and dangerously heretical ideas.
With the help of a few disgruntled sailors, Jeronimus soon sparked a mutiny that seemed certain to succeed—but for one unplanned event: In the dark morning hours of June 3, the Batavia smashed through a coral reef and ran aground on a small chain of islands near Australia. The commander of the ship and the skipper evaded the mutineers by escaping in a tiny lifeboat and setting a course for Java—some 1,800 miles north—to summon help. Nearly all of the passengers survived the wreck and found themselves trapped on a bleak coral island without water, food, or shelter. Leaderless, unarmed, and unaware of Jeronimus’s treachery, they were at the mercy of the mutineers.
Jeronimus took control almost immediately, preaching his own twisted version of heresy he’d learned in Holland’s secret Anabaptist societies. More than 100 people died at his command in the months that followed. Before long, an all-out war erupted between the mutineers and a small group of soldiers led by Wiebbe Hayes, the one man brave enough to challenge Jeronimus’s band of butchers.
Unluckily for the mutineers, the Batavia’s commander had raised the alarm in Java, and at the height of the violence the Company’s gunboats sailed over the horizon. Jeronimus and his mutineers would meet an end almost as gruesome as that of the innocents whose blood had run on the small island they called Batavia’s Graveyard.
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In typical fashion, the author opens with a prologue filled with the thrills and excitement of the Batavia hitting the reef at night. The 341 people on board - mostly men, but also women and children, attempting to stay alive and on board long enough to be ferried to the coral island from the wreck. It was 4 June 1629, the Batavia was a Dutch VOC East Indiaman, and was the flagship of a trading fleet on her maiden voyage on her way to her namesake in Indonesia - the Spice Islands, at the time.
To find out where they were, why she was alone if she was the flagship, and who all the souls who were shipwrecked were, the author goes deep into the back ground of the primary antagonists and protagonists, and we don't return to the site of the shipwreck for nearly 100 pages! For me, while the deep dive into the live of Jeronimus Cornelisz, the Under-Merchant; to Dutch politics, religion and trade; the VOC (Dutch East Indies Company) and its stranglehold on the spice trade; and the recent history of the ship was a little too deep, and really tested my resilience. I was close to skipping ahead, and getting back to the reef. But, finally we return to learn not only about the shipwreck, but a mutiny planned prior to this!
The reef that was struck, we are told is a part of the Houtman Abrolhos, a chain of small islands off the west coast of Australia. Australia in 1629 has perhaps been reached by other shipwreck victims, but none who have returned to ‘civilisation'. Of the 341 people on the ship, around 300 are ferried to a nearby coral island, a quick search of which shows it has no fresh water. Hasty plans are made, and the Upper-Merchant (who is essentially empowered by the company to outrank the captain), the captain and some of the more senior sailors depart in a longboat to seek water. They head for Terra Australis - the mainland, but the coast in this region is incredibly harsh, made up of high cliffs and dangerous shorelines. Eventually they travel so far that they set off for the Spice Islands, in the hope of coming across other ships for rescue.
An adult Lord of the Flies is often called up in reviews, and for good reason. The remainder of the people are led by a group of senior men, including the Under-Merchant, who is the highest ranking man - from the company. It is he who sets about, albeit subtly, in a reign of terror, moving men who he perceives as a threat to other islands, and then reducing the numbers on the island to save what food and water are left. I won't detail more here, as there is much of (gruesome) interest to the reader with the time spent on the islands.
In due course the Upper Merchant returns with a rescue crew - to be fair the company were far more interested in recovering the chests of silver and jewels than the survivors - and they try to unravel the goings on from the lies and denials. The men are tried for their actions on the island, and for the mutiny planned.
This book is not without a slow section, but otherwise meticulously researched, with a long bibliography and almost a hundred pages of notes, this book goes into great detail, and is, for the most part, riveting reading.
If I was otherwise critical, the author seems determined not to consistently refer to the people in a single way. For example - Jeronimus Cornelisz, the Under-Merchant. He is referred to as Jermonimus, or Cornelisz, or the Under-Merchant, or the apothecary , or the Captain-General (his self imposed title on the island). Bearing in mind he does this with more than one person, it gets really quite unnecessarily confusing. To me the Dutch names are confusing at the best of times, especially with a few of the people having similarities in their names too!
Still, recommended. 4 stars.
